


Comet

by proxydialogue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Gen, post season 6 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:34:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proxydialogue/pseuds/proxydialogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's kinda like being chained to a comet."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comet

**Author's Note:**

> Archived from LJ. Orig pub: 5/27/2011. 
> 
>  
> 
> An alternative summary could be: "Wherein I am overzealous with Jimmy's metaphor." But, hey. 
> 
> I should say that Ward is a real cemetery in Verona, Illinois according to google maps. However, I have never been there, and so I have no idea if it's actually on a hill or not. It is a place, with that name, I made everything else up. Also, for all I know on 1/9/1986 it was raining buckets and cats and dogs and shits and giggles.

_February 9 th, 1986: Verona, Illinois _  
    
Jimmy Novak went to the Ward cemetery that night because he wanted to see Halley's comet and the cemetery was on top of a hill. He didn't believe in ghosts, even at eleven, and he didn't expect to see any ghosts—really the thought of sitting around in the dark and the snow with nothing but a lot of graves for company just seemed like a quiet, if chilly, way to spend an evening to him—but a ghost was what he saw.   
    
The weather that night was the kind of weather that is hardly really weather at all. It was windless, with a crisp sky and open air and people drinking wine in their living rooms. The snow on the ground made one smooth, loping surface that stretched from yard to yard and then kept stretching until it hit the tree line or the horizon. Everything was frozen.  
    
One lone, wispy Altostratus cloud blotted out Orion's belt in the east.   
    
Jimmy crunched his way down the side of the street, stomping his footprints into the ground with his boots. He had his father's binoculars slung around his left arm in a plastic bag and a flashlight in the pocket of his coat. Jimmy was alone because no one else's mothers wanted their kids out in the middle of the night in the middle of the winter. But Jimmy wasn't going to wait until he was eighty-six to try again just because it was cold and dark. He plodded through the night by the borrowed glow of porch lights and the glare off the snow, down State road, and then cut across the Nelson's dead cornfield. His legs weighed about a thousand pounds each and his feet were sweaty by the time he got to the iron gate. It was an old, rusted thing, with a wooden sign that read: "Ward Cemetery: Entrance/Exit." He pulled off his gloves and stuffed them down the top of his coat so he could undo the latch.   
    
The gate was never locked. There was no reason for a lock; nobody messed with the peace of the dead in Verona. Jimmy pushed the gate open just wide enough to slip by, and then let it bang closed behind him.   
    
The bang echoed down the street and off the trees that surrounded the hill, bounced off the headstones and sank into the ground. It was a jarring, hideous sound, and then it was gone. Jimmy wasn't worried about the noise. There were no sleeping people here, only dead ones, and any racket he could muster up would never be enough to wake them.   
    
It had been a year of revelations for Jimmy. His parents didn't love each anymore (but apparently they did love him, very, very much, and he was not to blame himself), his history teacher didn't have all the answers after all (not that Jimmy would have been any worse off thinking the battle of Gettysburg happened in June instead of July, he would have figured it out on his own eventually), and there was no God.   
    
Claire had always said that there was. That He loved everyone and looked out for them and took good care of everybody's grandparents. For a long time Jimmy had believed her. She was his best friend and he knew she wouldn't lie to him on purpose. And of the two of them, Claire was the know-it-all. But in the end Claire had been mistaken (that happened, sometimes), and now Jimmy had to ride the bus by himself and eat his lunch alone.   
    
Jimmy climbed to the top of the hill and sat down on the ground in his snow pants. He pulled the binoculars out of his bag and tipped his head back to look up at the sky, squinting to find that little streak. It would be moving more slowly than he expected, his father had said.   
    
He was looking up at all the stars—and wondering how he was supposed to pick out one tiny, crawling, speck of light?—when he heard the sound of the wind creeping up the hill, but didn't feel the brush of it on his face. He looked back down and caught a glimpse of the comet, trailing mildly along through the sky, as he did so.   
    
The ghost was standing there. Halfway down the hill, the gate and the road and the lights of Verona behind him.   
    
He was facing Jimmy—staring right at him. His face and hands were white. His pants and his hair were black. His long coat, a color Jimmy couldn't make out, was oversized and draped heavily across his bowed shoulders. His shadow was a confusing, distorted shape on the ground that fell from the wrong side of his body, that fell  _towards_  the light of the moon.   
    
Jimmy knew the man was a ghost because he looked like one; sad and angry. He looked like a guy who knew about being dead.   
    
He brought a need for silence onto that hill.   
    
The ghost was very still. Jimmy looked down at him and wondered how, of all the tiny lit up windows and all the glowing porch-lights, he was supposed to find his own again? When this man brought the sky down like it was home and pushed home away until it was another country?   
    
He terrified Jimmy like nothing ever had. He brought back, very literally, the fear of God.   
    
When the ghost saw that Jimmy had seen him, he bent forward and hid his face. It was a slow motion, like a strung out sigh. His shadow drew in on itself.    
    
Jimmy stuffed his binoculars back into the bag and turned toward the woods and took the long way home, running. It was two miles without a road or a beaten path, and he threw up when he got there. His chest was burning from the cold air and his eyes and face were stinging. His lips and chin felt wet, but it wasn't until he walked in the front door and his father sat up from his armchair, alarmed and asked: "Jimmy? What happened!" the he realized his nose was bleeding. Jimmy shut himself in his bedroom, with tissues stuffed up his nose, and sat on the floor beside the heater. He closed his shade and closed his eyes, and prayed to God for forgiveness, over and over again, until he drifted off to sleep.   
    
Where God forgave him in a dream.   
    
They were sitting together on a bench, in a park Jimmy didn't recognize. It was, he supposed, a place that God knew and liked. God was wearing the face of the ghost, perhaps so Jimmy would recognize him, and the sunlight that was everywhere was just a little too bright.   
    
"You don't need to be afraid of me," God said. His voice sounded like it got used too much.   
    
"I'm sorry," said Jimmy.   
    
"I know," the ghost who was covering up the face of God looked at him. Now that he was closer, Jimmy could see that his coat was tan, and his eyes were blue. "But you must answer my question." Jimmy nodded, swinging his feet. It was warm here. "Why did you loose faith in me?"   
    
Jimmy had expected a harder question. "Because you killed Claire," he answered. God looked shocked for a moment, if that was possible.   
    
"Claire?" he asked. It annoyed Jimmy that God didn't remember. Busy as he must have been, she had only died a month ago.   
    
"My best friend," Jimmy said sharply. "She lived down the street from me? You gave her Leukemia."   
    
God stared at him, weary and wide-eyed. "Of course," he said after a second. "I was thinking of another Claire you will know." He closed his eyes and bent forward, an echo from the cemetery.   
    
"What's wrong?" Jimmy touched God's elbow.   
    
"You believe in me again because of what you saw tonight?" God asked. His chin, Jimmy noticed, was covered in stubble.   
    
"Yes."   
    
God said a bad word and stood up, agitated. "This means I have always come here like this," he mumbled and pushed his fingers through his hair. It was a strange thought, but Jimmy felt like that gesture was one God had picked up from somebody else, it was stiff and it didn't fit him right. God said, distracted but gently: "I will need you someday, Jimmy," He lay two fingers on Jimmy's forehead and then vanished.   
    
The playground rained and bled away and Jimmy had a more normal dream about wolves chasing him through the hallways of his school.   
    
"Did you get to see the comet?" his father asked him the next morning while Jimmy ate breakfast. It was snowing again, heavily, and soon the gravestones would all be buried.   
    
Jimmy had forgotten about the comet.   
    
"No," he said and remembered, belatedly, that he had forgotten something else. He put his spoon down and folded his hands to say a quiet grace in his head.   
    
"Ah," said his father, watching him oddly. He turned the page of his newspaper and gave Jimmy a smile. "Well, you know comets follow an orbit."   
    
"Uh huh?" Jimmy slurped his spoon back into his mouth. He had more important things to worry about than comets now. His father shrugged.   
    
"I'm just telling you. Because it means they always come back again."   
 


End file.
